Employee of the US Federal Reserve System Uses Service Server to Earn Bitcoins

A former analyst of the US Federal Reserve System (FRS) department in Washington were earning bitcoins from 2012 to 2014, having installed illegally third software on the server of the financial organization. He modified security policies to remotely access the server from home.

The Inspector General of the FRS informed that when the incident had been discovered, the employee had tried to delete the unauthorized software to cover tracks and initially had been denying his involvement in the crime. Nevertheless, the FRS department on incidents investigation managed to find evidences of illegal actions of the former analyst. So, the insider had to admit his fault in illegal use of state property for personal purposes.

The violator was sentenced to 12 months’ probation and fined $5,000 xu0eklj. On the one hand, relative leniency of the sentence is determined by the fact that the accused was cooperating with the prosecution and admitted his fault willingly. On the other hand, information security experts in the FRS failed to find out how many bitcoins the former analyst had earned. The Inspector General clarified that it was impossible to estimate the revenue because of the anonymity of the blockchain on which the cryptocurrency network was established.

The official statement of the Inspector General highlights that the insider activity has not led to sensitive data leakage. Though, following the incident the FRS enhanced information security.